This invention relates to a safety collar for animals, especially cats, and more particularly to such a collar which includes a fastener having a pressure releasable safety position and a conventional locked or leash position.
Identification and flea collars for pet animals are subject to the hazard of being caught or entangled on some projecting object during the animal's pursuit of adventure. Many a cat and dog have been strangled when its collar has been caught on brush in the woods, a tree, fence or similar object with no one around to free it. Conventional collars are choke collars and as the animal tries to free itself the collar further tightens.
This problem has been recognized and attempts to provide a safety collar have been made by the prior art. Examples of the known prior art are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos.: 2,612,139; 3,131,674; 3,011,478; and 3,589,341.With the expansion of U.S. Pat. No. 3,011,478 none of the prior art safety collars can also be used as a conventional choke collar for walking the animal on a leash. Those collars would release when the leash is tugged against the pull of the animal. In the disclosure of the excepted patent a chain having a sprial coupling with resilient arms is affixed to the other end. The coupling is passed through the ring and a leash may or may not be attached to the spiral coupling. If it is attached, the collar acts as a choke; if not, the collar acts as a safety collar since a force on the collar tends to decrease the separation between the arms until they pass through the ring to release the collar from the animal's neck. The spiral coupling must, however, be made of a spring-type metal which has the required elasticity, but which is a costly commodity.